[kwlug-disc] Linux on the Desktop

[John Van Ostrand]

On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 4:01 PM, Nelson F. <nelsonjfr at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Hi there.
>
> Was just reading email bellow about going cold turkey with Linux on the
> Desktop and I was wondering what everyone experience is.
>
> I tried a few distributions in the 'live' modality (no install): Ubuntu,
> Debian, Fedora, Elementary, Manjaro, Mint & Artegos.
>

I've used Linux as my desktop for a very long time. Over 10 years for sure.
I've stuck to the Fedora distro mostly although I know people who like
Debian flavours.
>
>
> In most I found issues (screen suddenly froze, mouse did not respond).
>
>
> You are using a live distro which is going to be sluggish. My laptop
(Thinkpad) is my main system and it's on constantly and often has months of
up time. Aside from update related reboots (e.g. kernels) the reason I see
hangs are storage related, one when my NFS share goes away (wifi down or
something like that) and I'm not patient enough to wait for a timeout (and
not smart enough to put "soft" in the mount options. The second is when the
local filesystem fills up. Linux should gracefully handle things like that
so I'm a little confused as to why.

I used to have Firefox crash/hang a lot (every few days, open all the
time), but I switched to Chrome and now only one tab will hang.

Fedora and Debian seemed to be the more stable ones.
>
>
> Any suggestions? Experiences?
>

The downside to Linux on the desktop is that you often can't find the niche
tools that seems so common with Windows. I'm not a utility junkie so it
doesn't affect me. The example I used to use was printing CD-ROM labels.
Remember those? You'd buy a kit that had labels and a device to align the
label during application. It also came with an app to design a label. I've
never found one for LInux, although there are templates for LibreOffice.

Setting up some things takes a little work and doesn't provide all the
functions of Windows, like say managing a network printer. I think Windows
users get a better experience.

But those are all minor things. I get my real work, email, facebook,
spreadsheets, documents, programming, video/photo editing, drawing, 3D CAD,
scuba dving logs, circuit board design, etc all done on Linux. I use the
system literally 12 hours a day. I touch Windows only when a family member
asks me to help (cringe) and I haven't touched a Mac in years.

When I was in an office I used Linux on a variety of desktop PCs too and
had lots of up-time on those.

Be patient. It takes time to get used to the differences. Avoid proprietary
software. Adobe Acrobat Reader is horrible on Linux.

You may not be able to run setup utilities that come with devices like
printers, routers, switches and you'll have to use their console or web
administration methods. These things will make you smarter about
configuration.

You'll likely want "non-free" software. Free as in speech, that is. It's
software that's burdened with licensing, mainly audio and video codecs. A
web search will find great reasources on how to install the non-free codecs.

You'll have to find the open source app equivalent to the ones you're used
to now. There are sites that do that mapping for you. I have my favourites.
Some aren't great, others are better than the proprietary ones.

Be patient.


>
> Thanks
> ------------------------------
> *From:* kwlug-disc <kwlug-disc-bounces at kwlug.org> on behalf of
> CrankyOldBugger <crankyoldbugger at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* February 22, 2017 9:09 AM
> *To:* KWLUG discussion
> *Subject:* [kwlug-disc] Blogging software for Linux
>
> Anybody out there know of a good client for uploading to a Wordpress
> blog?  I still have to maintain a couple of blogs and "back in the day"
> when I had a Windows machine I uploaded using OpenWriter, a fork of MS's
> Live Writer.  But now that I've gone cold-turkey to Linux I'm in the market
> for a similar tool that works in Ubuntu.
>
> I tried Blogilo last night but found it lacking (it couldn't handle photos
> at all).  It did have some nice features, though, but it's just not "there"
> yet.
>
> Essentially the client sends me a .doc with all the new blog content, I
> copy it subject by subject to the blog client software then upload it.
> Piece of cake.  But Blogilo choked on any article with a photo in it.  It
> handled the text-only articles fine.
>
> Anyone out there have a favourite to recommend?
>
>
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>
>


-- 
John Van Ostrand
At large on sabbatical
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